Soldato
Of course the price has plummeted ... it's Black Friday.
Bitcoin RIP
- Thread starter LiE
- Start date
The whole crypto mining craze just seems like a colossal waste of energy to me during times when we have stringent laws limiting the energy usage of light bulbs and other electrical appliances. All of that energy would be much better spent on something like Folding@home.
Whilst i agree, unfortunately humans are greedy by nature and will do anything they can to make $$$. Helping to come up with a cure for cancer doesn't make $$$.
I would imagine projects like folding@home actually declined as people jumped on the mining bandwagon.
Caporegime
Exactly, there isn't much point to it. It was a fun idea/concept and amusing that it took off but tbh... it is a pointless waste of resources/electricity.
What benefit does mining bring? My understanding was research companies pay to use peoples gpu powercto do algorithms etc. What happens now to those requiring this service? Why does it elhave to be bought via coins? Did people used to buyva service with basically a favricated currency and let people determine the value so essentially getting people to use their gpus to do the work for them for free?
Soldato
You're getting mixed up between BitCoin and distributed computing services.
BitCoin doesn't do any other processing work, it only creates bitcoins (and validates transactions using bitcoins). Because there is no overall authority for bitcoin, there is nobody to create the coins, so the users do it. It's difficult to create a coin and takes a lot of processing power to solve a complex mathematical formula (so that it's difficult to forge a coin). Mining bitcoins could be thought of similar to the Royal Mint printing physical coins.
Distributed computing allows people to donate (or sell) their computing power to others who need it. The folding@home mentioned already in this thread is an example of that.
Some distributed computing services may make payments in bitcoins but there's no intrinsic link between the two. It could just as easily be paid in any other currency.
Soldato
Hopefully this will move the slider further towards utilising cryptocurrencies as something other than investment.
The people who got in it at the beginning wont care, the people who got in during it's smallish rise won't care, the people who rushed in when it was going straight up to $10-20k... without any real experience in markets, lots of grief.
Oh well.
It's done a number on AMD and Nvidia as well.
Oh well.
It's done a number on AMD and Nvidia as well.
Associate
There is. It is an un-censorable form of currency. No central entity can stop you from transacting on the network , no bank can close your account.
given the price of some medicines and drugs, i'd have to disagree there.
I’m not sure what you mean? Has someone stoppped you from using GBP? How do you “censor” a real currency?
Even re: banks in a specific jurisdiction supposing you can’t open an account with say HSBC you can just open one with another bank.
Associate
- Joined
- 19 Jul 2004
- Posts
- 513
One use is the movement of money, international payments across borders always have high fees, from what I have read (could be fake?) its anywhere from 8-20%.
Sending money internationally depending on what crypto you use can cost a nominal fee. I’m sure I read 3,000,000 USD in XRP was sent for 0.70C - near enough instantly.
BTC fees are low and there are multiple other currencies with little to no fees...
I thought the movement into crypto started because people where fed up of the bankers charging us for using our money how we wanted... the financial crisis in 2008 was the nail in the coffin...
This is all based on what I’ve read, one thing for definite I have learnt in the crypto sphere is fake news is everywhere!
Sending money internationally depending on what crypto you use can cost a nominal fee. I’m sure I read 3,000,000 USD in XRP was sent for 0.70C - near enough instantly.
BTC fees are low and there are multiple other currencies with little to no fees...
I thought the movement into crypto started because people where fed up of the bankers charging us for using our money how we wanted... the financial crisis in 2008 was the nail in the coffin...
This is all based on what I’ve read, one thing for definite I have learnt in the crypto sphere is fake news is everywhere!
- Joined
- 30 Jul 2006
- Posts
- 12,130
Tough times ahead for Scammers 
From a distributed computing perspective i mean, sure if you've got yourself a pharmaceutical lab and are able to tweak some viruses etc to cure a cancer then yes you'd make a pretty penny, but i was more referring to Dave who's running 50 GPU's in his garden shed isn't going to make a penny by donating that processing power to distributed computing projects.
I would presume he means for illegitimate purposes. I can't think of a single legitimate use-case where a real physical currency such as GBP would stop you from making your day-to-day transactions.